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Prufrock: How to be a top boss: ask your wife

IF YOU are reading this in bed, turn over now. You are facing your most valued business adviser.

Never mind the legions of consultants perennially crawling over Britain’s biggest companies and charging astronomical fees. Executives take their wives’ opinions on corporate strategy far more seriously. When deciding on big strategic moves, one in three business big cheeses will put their wives’ views before those of professionals such as consultants, bankers and lawyers, according to a new survey to be published this week.

Perhaps more worrying still, The Thoughts that Count, by Philippa Dickenson, finds that 85% of Britain’s management elite will cheerfully discard advisers with spreadsheets, forecasts and price-elasticity models and base decisions on good old-fashioned “gut feelings” instead.

At least this now explains in part the irrational exuberance at the time of the dotcom boom, as well as some of the lesser business successes of recent history.